Atlas of Arcadia Read online

  “It’s like your dream,” gasped Abi. The group watched the images for a few minutes before Ferris ripped himself free of the sofa, and took off across the building to his cabin in a rage. Atlas leapt forward to follow but Abi grabbed his arm. “No, Atlas, leave him alone. He is wrong to blame you; we’re all upset by what’s going on but it isn’t your fight, we are innocent bystanders like everyone else.”

  Atlas pulled her to him for a hug. “I just hope Laki completes his revolution soon before any more deaths.” He gave a sigh.

  “Do you think the LN bombed Hue Long?” asked Abi, looking over Atlas’s arm wide eyed.

  “I don’t know, from what I’ve heard Hue Long was under control by the LN very quickly after Black Friday. I’m not sure what they would gain from doing this, since their goal is ultimately to protect lives.” They looked back to the screen where the hole in the wall was opening more and more, as water poured in from the sea at faster rates. Ships appeared from all around to rescue people as well as aircraft. Atlas noted the strategic advantage of destroying Hue Long for the Arcadians: it was now LN controlled; it contained many upper class individuals; it could be blamed on the LN giving a common enemy to the disjointed factions in every civic.

  “Do you hear gunfire?” asked Atlas He turned off the volume and realised he could still hear the sounds. Looking up, his guards seemed to be rushing around above and triggering their active camo. ‘Chris what’s going on?’ Atlas messaged Chris Hammer who didn’t reply. Atlas looked across to the Pagida, popping and performing a warm-up sequence. Abi was sobbing into his chest. He knew he had to move but couldn’t quite begin to process what to do next, so he retrieved his hand gun and took the safety off. A shivering glimmer of air stood in front of him, he reached out and felt an arm; the invisible arm shrugged him away.

  “Atlas, we’ve got to get you out, I have no idea who’s attacking but they are good, they were right inside before…” the familiar voice of Christian Hammer whispered before being interrupted by the sudden need for him to fire loudly into a distant scaffold by an open window. “MOVE UP,” shouted Christian.

  Atlas felt an invisible hand grab him and pull him across the room. Screams erupted from the staff as the sudden gunfire spread across the room and groups of people rushed for the exits. More gunfire and screams came from the exits. Atlas could see his staff falling to the ground in sprays of red as they fled. All around himself and Abi was a shimmer of armoured bodies. Bullets sparked off them loudly. The group charged up a staircase behind the Pagida.

  “The Pagida is being powered up by someone,” yelled Atlas over the barrage of gunfire. He looked down to the floor below to see a scattering of corpses, including Keith Turns collapsed in front of a spilled tray of coffee. The multitude of invisible beings thrust Abi and Atlas to the end of the catwalk connecting to the craft. Atlas yanked at a handle. Suddenly a loud pop went off next to Atlas, air sucked away from him and the gurgling remains of a guard stumbled for a moment before the decapitated body tumbled to the ground. Atlas who had felt strangely calm until that moment was suddenly filled with a deep sense of panic. Invisible hands reached across to help yank on the handle. The piston gave and the aperture opened. Unseen bodies forced open the door of the white triangular door made of an anti-gravity plate. The group tore inside as bullets bounced nearby. Abi was screeching in panic so Atlas grabbed her and pulled her inside. The space they were in was a tube going through the centre of the sphere, the sides were black sheeting containing a mesh of cables dangling at all angles and across the floor. The inside of the craft gave the impression it had been built in a great rush and with little care. Up ahead was a circular air lock door. Some of the guard’s active camo flicked off as they yanked the grav plates closed again, sealing them in.

  “Let’s find out what traitorous bastard is flying this thing,” said Christian as his camo flicked off. His face shield slid back. Christian held his short machine gun in one hand as he violently spun the handle with the other. Abi and Atlas were pressed against the side of the chamber. Christian finished turning the handle as the door silently opened backwards into the chamber, before he stepped into the pristine white space adorned in blue stripes, pipes and cables. Silently forging forward, Christian popped open cabinets and doors along the vessel, pointing his weapon with dangerous intent. He neared the cockpit door at the end which in this case was a thin panel with a flat square handle. Christian ripped it open. “Hands up, Hands up.” He had grabbed something and tore it into the air, before bumping it hard down the corridor; he stuck his weapon to its chest and began pummelling the screaming person with fury.

  “Junius,” yelled Atlas. The sobbing grey-headed mess was now awash with blood and tears. Arms tore him away and pinned him against the floor.

  “Let’s get moving,” screamed Christian.

  Atlas took a second to process the request before realising the intention was to take off in the Pagida. Panic hit him once more but he swallowed it and took to the cockpit, which was heaving with manual buttons of infinite purpose. He realised they could very well end up lost in the vacuum of space or crushed under infinite pressure. He focused and loaded the connection information. Ferris popped into his mind, but he focused on his task. An image of the surrounding of the craft popped up. A shimmer of air was running down the gantry to the door at the back. “It looks like we have a group trying to enter down the gantry,” yelled Atlas over the panicky apologies of Junius.

  “Put your oxygen on, cover the door from outside, chips, and shut up, you fucking scumbag,” yelled Christian to Junius.

  Atlas began fumbling around in the controls before ultimately concluding the automatic features had been damaged and disabled. A coordinate was already implanted and from Atlas’s memory of flight coordinates the numbers meant ground level on planet earth. The configuration seemed to have the correct speed and rotation of the earth set up already. Luckily Atlas had a map for the manual buttons and used his search feature and memory of the jargon to get things moving. He tried firing up all BHEs but a warning popped up to say the gantry door was being forced open so the option to engage was locked out. “Force the doors closed and we can take off,” commanded Atlas to his crew. He tried to find the individual ejector for the back and almost hit the door release. The doors were heaved closed and the ejectors popped on, killing whoever was pulling at it. The moment the door was closed the craft left for unfamiliar dimensions. “We’re safe,” mumbled Atlas unconvinced. There was no obvious external information to say they had left the universe, or even that they were about to return to it in a new location. To anyone looking at the take-off it would have looked very strange, the singular white spherical craft turned black and opaque; to the outside viewer one image of the craft expanded becoming invisible as it did so and a ghostly shadow of the craft visually shrunk to an infinitely small size. Turning in his seat he saw a tuft of Junius’s reddened straggly hair.

  “Atlas. I’m sorry I killed that man, I was trying to open the door,” wailed Junius. Atlas thought back to a few minutes before where the guard had been decapitated by Junius’s Action.

  “You tried to steal the Pagida for the fucking Arcadians,” snarled Christian putting on a show.

  “I was protecting the craft. If I was trying to steal it I had plenty of time to escape; someone has tampered with the controls.”

  Atlas agreed but said nothing, something seemed off. One of the anti-gravity plates overheated and sent a signal to shut down to the Black Hole Emitters’.

  “Shit, the BHEs are turning off. We are about to return to earth.” Looking in the outside display expecting the scene of being surrounded by an armed militia, Atlas was instead looking at a glorious garden, spreading to the horizons. The mansions below were spread out like a Victorian paradise, dotted here and there with fantastic plant-coated modern white towers. Lakes, meadows, valleys and woods spread everywhere, and in some places tropical plants grew alongside artificial beaches and others had bamboo forests an
d pagodas.

  “We are in more trouble than I thought.”

  Christian, who was also logged into the display, was dumbfounded. “We’re in fucking Arcadia.”

  VI

  Andy Series scratched at his large itchy beard in frustration. He was sitting on his deckchair surveying the Tass lake community. The previous few weeks had been troubling. News had hit them fast about the global economic meltdown. Andy who at first had a bad feeling about the security Atlas had sent, was now glad they were here. Large groups of people seemed to be roaming the countryside trying to stay alive. All week he had heard distant gunshots exchanged between the armed guards and the invaders. They had quickly called back all the young Tass members working in the city and, so far, they had all mostly returned without harm except Atlas and Ferris. Atlas was only able to relay messages through the security guards at first as the Nano networks were still patchy at best. The public networks were not being maintained; the civics were barely operating. Atlas was safe at least, although Zack seemed more concerned about Atlas than Ferris. He assumed since Ferris was stuck at Atlas’s building he wouldn’t be getting into any new trouble. Andy was frustrated at Atlas, when the network was last up Atlas had given him a billion credits, through an accountant called Laki. This uncomfortable amount of money worried Andy deeply. He had understood Atlas would be well paid for starting his business but now the money was here it burned at him, and did not sit right. It also caused problems in the community. It had been a point of contention in recent debates between Tass groups about who should be doing the labour-intensive farming work like picking. If this amount of money was widely known about the residents might insist on importing Fuco rather than growing it themselves, further increasing the boredom in camp and eroding their communal beliefs.

  “Morning,” Mao chirped as he walked over with Terry.

  “Morning,” replied Andy. The men were in their sixties now and starting to feel and look their age. Mao collapsed onto the weathered sofa and Terry slouched onto the rocking chair next to Andy. Andy would have preferred some solitude but didn’t mind enough to tell the couple to leave.

  “What’s bothering you, Andy? I can tell somethings up,” asked Terry.

  Andy contemplated keeping the money quiet but decided against it, sharing was part of the experiment of this community after all. “Atlas has given me a hundred million credits.”

  Terry looked shocked and glanced over to Mao who appeared not to have heard. “Atlas has given Andy millions of credits.”

  Mao who was going deaf now reacted and looked surprised before replying, “I thought all the credits were stolen.”

  Terry looked back to Andy quizzically. “The value of the credit has plummeted so it’s more like a million credits before the troubles, but still a million credits is nothing to be sniffed at.”

  “It will go up in value again if they recover it,” interjected Mao. The three men stared off ahead towards the lake and the children playing. In the distance, someone was erecting yet another tent.

  “The first thing we should do is get some proper buildings for our new guests,” advised Terry.

  “Go on, Andy, lend us a few credits.” Mao laughed.

  “We’ve got enough creds to build our own Arcadia.” Andy smiled.

  “We already have, chip.” Terry beamed.

  The three elderly men enjoyed the peace and quiet. The moment was cut by a blast from beyond the trees. A message from the security read to evacuate everyone to the buildings. Andy quickly relayed the message to the Tass members and then sent more messages to the security asking what was going on. The reply came in the form of a video showing armoured intruders on the premises with vehicles. Andy raced into the house and returned with his rifle. His people flooded into the house from all over the camp. Looking down the sights he could see into the distant tree line where a group of Tass security were being gunned down. The men became visible as they slumped into a hopeless piles. In the tree line, explosions were occurring. Andy scanned across to some of the Tass members racing back to shore in their boats. One pontoon boat, which had a child sat in the front, disappeared in a white light. Fear and nausea struck Andy and his resolve died in a sudden cold panic. He glanced at his rocking chair almost trying to catch up with the sudden change of emotional gear. The boat driver and his son were close friends. A round hit the barrel of his gun, shattering it. Andy didn’t flinch but stood frozen in shock. Another round hit the barrel again and he dropped the gun and ran inside.

  The house was filled with screams and panic. Security for Tass raced through the crowd, their active camo flicking on as they reached the door. “Everyone get down and shut up,” yelled a guard angrily. The crowd obeyed but babies and smaller children continued to rattle off frightened noises. The guards at the door continued the fire fight for some time. After a while only one guard was returning fire. Andy collected himself and fetched his staff stick from a wall mount and crouched behind the door. The room clenched up and screamed as they had witnessed something Andy didn’t see. Andy community linked with Mao’s sight who was sitting near the front of the crowd facing the door. The image Mao saw was a fully armoured soldier standing holding a laser knife in one hand, in the other hand he held the head of one of the security guards, to the right was Andy holding a stick, hiding behind the front door. The soldier’s face shield slid back to show an unpleasant squashed face and a subtle cursed smile. The soldier continued into the room and loomed over the cowering people. Andy launched himself forward and struck the back of the soldier’s head with great force, the impact cracked onto an invisible surface an inch away from the soldier’s scalp. The air clicked, flickered and revealed the end of the staff to be in the hand of a second previously invisible soldier. The stick was thrust back into Andy’s face, which he dodged, a large gloved hand grabbed him. Andy was painfully pressed up against the wall. He considered the faces of the frightened people as they were ushered out of the building. Andy looked left through the front door window to see a swarm of soldiers and armoured vehicles advancing towards them.

  VII

  Christian grabbed Junius by the lapels and began senselessly beating him.

  “Cut it out,” yelled Atlas.

  “I should shoot this traitorous gimp in the teeth,” hissed Christian, and a few gallows chuckles sailed around the armoured men.

  Atlas went back to the manual buttons to see if he could get the system working again. The overheated grav plate would take hours to cool enough for the sensor to be happy again. It was on the bottom of the craft so it couldn’t be switched off otherwise they would plummet to the ground. “I think we are stuck, I’m not getting any bright ideas,” stressed Atlas. Looking out of the craft it appeared they were descending, since the damaged grav plate was allowing gravity through. Atlas looked up to the strange UFO-like object in the sky which was the generator for the Arcadia dome. It prevented people peering in by satellite, and controlled the weather in the region, the Arcadians really did live in their own bubble. Atlas tapped at the flight chair impatiently. “Sitting ducks.” Atlas exhaled.

  “If we can get under the surface we can find a way out through a tunnel,” suggested Junius.

  “Yes, you’ve been here before,” said Christian.

  “I lived in a quiet cottage near the rim” replied Junius, head in hands, mumbling to his shoes.

  “I could certainly punch a hole through to the tunnels,” offered Christian.

  “Do the mansions have access inside them to go underneath, because we are directly over one?” asked Atlas to Junius.

  “In the garages normally.” Junius nodded.

  “We are directly over a mansion. It looks like a garage next to the greenhouse; that’s our plan then,” said Atlas, and the crew nodded in agreement. Atlas tried to wipe the stress off his face with his hands, then looked over to Abi who seemed to be entirely switched off from what was going on around them. Atlas wandered over and sat next to her on the side. “Are you okay, Ab
i?” comforted Atlas, placing a hand on her cheek and holding her close. Abi sobbed into his face as Atlas was buried pleasantly in her hair. The guards turned away but Christian continued to look across mournfully thinking he might not see his girlfriend and child again. The craft descended.

  With a crunch the Pagida wound its way into the roof of the ornate mansion, the Pagida door helpfully resting on a balcony. Flying vehicles descended on the location, invisible polys dived into cover behind manicured hedges.

  “Time to make a move, chips,” said Christian.

  “Abi, we have to keep moving, but things are going to be okay,” cooed Atlas. He punched the door release button in the cockpit. The group fired out through the doors of the craft and smashed their way through a window into an occupied bedroom. On the bed was an amorous couple who were hurriedly dressing after hearing the crunch from the landing Pagida. The group ran with fury down the plush corridors of the building. Christian clumsily knocked over a strange statue of a thin-faced man with pointy hair which broke in half at the neck. His Nano alerted him to a presence behind so he spun and fired at the face. The armour piercing rounds exploded on the painted face of a man with a ‘v’ shaped beard and blue hat with the word ‘postes’. Junius struggled to keep up with the pace and was half carried half thrown by his shirt down the golden corridors by one of the guards. They reached a marble staircase. A guard grabbed Abi and leapt over the balcony despite her screams. Atlas and Junius were also similarly launched down the stairs. At the bottom a fierce laser fire fight broke out with unseen figures dotted around the reception area resulting in close combat with laser knives.

  Things went quiet as they took stock of what happened in the space of a few seconds. Smoking holes and slashed bodies were strewn about the warren of opulence. Several of Christian’s men were dead, leaving just two guards and Christian from the original seven. One Arcadian civic poly was lying face down in a silver fountain. Another group were blown apart in a single rocket strike leaving some of the ceiling and walls in a blistering, burning state. Atlas felt sick with adrenaline but was determined not to surrender to panic. Christian dived forward into a crouched position and began trailing the pearl walls. Checking corners with precision movements, he made a hand gesture to stop, and then violently blasted a volley of explosives forwards down the corridor along with smoke bombs.